Today I want to talk about how to avoid burnout as a real estate agent or real estate investor. Now in this field, particularly, it’s really easy to burn out because we are always juggling so many different things. Competing tasks, different functions, chasing the deal, working long hours, not having clear delineation between personal and professional time.
What I found early on in my career is I needed to create a few different strategies to implement into my life and professional workflow in order to avoid burnout. I wanted to share those with you today. Hopefully these can help you. There’s three main things I want to talk about; strategies that I’ve developed and implemented to avoid burnout.
Create Parameters
The first is creating parameters, meaning creating safeguards to your time, setting expectations with prospects and clients and doing it in a way that’s respectful of your time, but also still responsive to your client’s needs.
For example, what we do is we typically set auto responders on email, as well as text and other business line functions that after certain hours, after usually 9:00 at night, you can maybe walk that back to 6:00 or 7:00 if you have a family and kids, but I don’t, and I work long hours, so I don’t have to do that. Setting a time from which anything after that has a response that says, you’ll get back to them first thing in the morning or within X amount of hours. Unless it’s an emergency, please text me at the following number.
Doing this does a couple of different things. It keeps you focused on your work blocks and it doesn’t let texts and emails and communication seep into your time, your personal time and your family time, that should be safe guarded at the beginning of the day and the end of the day. Ideally, you’re taking at least one day off per week. I usually take off Sundays, half of Sundays. Setting parameters and expectations from the outset on working with clients so that your time is protected.
Pre-Schedule Your Vacations
The second thing is pre-scheduling vacations; doing it at least quarterly, even if it’s just a long weekend getaway. I firmly believe you need to take at least one pre-scheduled vacation per quarter for a year. I also travel a lot for professional conferences and things that I speak at, but you should be getting away, even if it’s for an overnight, two days or a three day long weekend, at least four times a year.
What this does is helps you reset; helps you rejuvenate, decompress, have downtime and come back more energized and focused so that you actually more productive and you’re performing better. Pre-schedule vacations at the beginning of the year before you schedule anything else and then safeguard and time block those and don’t let anything get scheduled during that time when you’re going to be away. Prepare appropriately with staff and auto response and working ahead on certain deals and things so that you’re not working while you’re on vacation. You might a little bit, but you generally want to be off the grid and focus on your personal time. Pre-schedule vacations is the second strategy.
Develop and Cultivate Strong Morning and Evening Routines to Avoid Burnout
The third is to develop and cultivate and maintain really strong morning and evening routines and incorporating exercise and nutrition into your intentional good habit formation. Really take the time, at least an hour every morning, before you even get to the office and start your work day, to have personal time for you. Use this time for things that are important to you, that are what I call health and success habits.
For me, that’s reading the news every morning, the Wall Street Journal. It’s reading some of my book, exercising, writing in my journal, my affirmations and gratitudes, meditating, and looking at my calendar and setting the intentions for the day in the week. When I do that every day, I’m more intentional, more productive. I get more done. I also am putting on autopilot really key health habits that maintain a high level of energy, that keep me healthy, that allow me to perform better, show up more fully in my work and in my relationships.
The evening routine is almost equally important as the morning routine. That can be turning off at a certain time, not letting the day bleed into the night. That often happens with real estate agents and real estate investors. Another key strategy is to have a strong evening routine where you shut off after a certain time. For me, it’s usually 8:00 or a little bit after, and sometimes I don’t adhere to that well, but nonetheless, it’s setting that boundary where you’re realizing and accepting that tomorrow’s another day. You’ll have time to finish the work. While the deal doesn’t sleep, you need to, so protect that time, develop strong success in health habits. Morning and evening routines to avoid burnout.
Hopefully these three strategies were helpful to you on how to avoid burnout as a real estate agent or investor. One, again is setting parameters and expectations around your time, protecting and valuing your time. Two is pre-scheduling vacations, ideally once quarterly, and the third is really creating and implementing strong morning and evening routines, filled with success and health habits.
If you got value from this and you know somebody that would benefit from it, I encourage you to share this, leave a comment below, and shoot me a message or a DM. Let me know how it affected you and if it is helping in any way, I want to continue to bring you value each and every week with little tactics, strategies, tips, and things that have helped me in my journey, in my career, in my life, that may help you as well. To your success and happiness, we’ll talk to you soon.
Read more on Keir’s blog HERE.